December 1st

Holy smokes, what happened to the year.  Here it is December 1st, 24 days until Christmas Day and I haven't even stated Christmas shopping yet.  What a minute, I am a man we don't shop tell the 24th, it makes it easier to find things.  Where did this year go, it just seems like it was July 4th when we were at Calgary Stampede and now we are on the road to new places or some good old favorites.   We will be heading to Apache Junction by the end of the week and looking forward to a old stop for a change.
Today was maintenance day on the Car.  Changed the oil, checked all the fluids and greased all the fittings.  Cleaned the air cleaner, now we are ready to head out for some more riding.
Yesterday was our final ride with the group here in the desert.  We are leaving this Friday

On the trail for another great ride.

Look what we found on this ride.

 As you can see we found this bike that is out here some where, in the desert.  I think Pappy went in circle so we could not find this one, but it is a geocache so we have a find and the coordinates.

This was a little smaller group today, I think a few of them went out for a drink last night and had a few to many.  But the die hearts are out to day.

And look we even have a parking meter that still takes quarters. What a day, I am going to miss these rides, hope we have some good ones when we get to Apache Junction.
It might rain here in the next day or two, so it will be a mess out here riding, but water can wash off the mud and the car will be back to clean again.  The good thing with the rain is the dust will be down.

November 29th

We have had a great couple of days.  Thanksgiving was really pretty good here in the desert.  When we were working here two years ago we heard about all the things going on here in the desert.  But because we worked on the weekends and had the week days off we really didn't get a chance to get in on some of the fun out here on the Riviera.  But this last month we have had a great time and made some lasting friendships.  We do miss the kids but we are having fun and part of being retired is having fun.
Today we went out on another group ride.

We had a few people out on this ride, like about 12 cars following each other.  It was a lot of fun, the only problem is I didn't get to many pictures of the ride.  Some of the places that we were in was very technical.

 As you can tell it was a little tight going through some of the washes.

And a lot of sharp turns

.This place that we came down out of was almost straight up and down, but what fun.
It is going to be hard to leave here next week.  We will miss all of our friends, but I will not miss the fine dust.  The trails have been fun.  We have about 5 days left here and after this weekend everyone will be gone and maybe we can get a few more geocaches in before we leave.

November 25th

We went out for a short ride today and found some interesting things out here in the desert.  Pappy must of a photo memory of this area, he is able to take you on some great rides and never thinks twice about which way to go.  So here is another great ride.

The first stop was a cliff dwelling,  I really think some kids are playing around!!!!

Pappy says this has been out here for over 6 months, don't know who left it but it is about 5 miles from any road.  Now we are heading up to those hills to find something else.

First through some narrow washes, that are not very flat.

Well at least their have been other people on this trail.

Yep, we are going up that way!!!!

OK, we made a sharp left and went this way.

Still climbing!!!!

Pappy says he knows where he is going.

This old three wheeler is planted here, I don;t know how they got it here but what a view.

They have attached a geocaches to this 3-wheeler, so we did a logged this one into out fines here in the desert. The ride out was about the same as we had coming up here but a different way.  We had a great time and look forward to this weekend of trail riding with this group.  We are planning on going out geocaching tomorrow.

November 23rd

Here it is Sunday night, setting in my chair resting after a great weekend.  There are a few people down this weekend that we go riding with and it has been good.  Pappy does a great job of taking us out on some great rides.  We have been on some real good technical rides and then some nice washes that we can open it up and fly low.  Here are a few pictures of the two days of riding.

Here is the group getting ready to head out for a short ride.

 I think Pappy knows every inch of this park, here we are at a BBQ, just bring your lunch and heat it up.

 A lot of ups and downs and twisted trails.

Another hill to climb.

We followed a 1000 up this hill and he dug some deep trenches and guess what happened to us. Yep we got high centered.

 We went through some very narrow washes, a couple of places the sides meet the car when it was a little narrow.

 Slow down some big rocks to go over or around.

 We finished the ride with a beautiful sunset.  We have had a lot of good ones this last couple of weeks.

We had a great day, it is to bad most of these people have to go back to work.  They will all be back by Thursday for a long weekend of playing.  We are looking forward to Thanksgiving in the Desert.  The last time we were here, we were working, and I think this time it will be a lot more fun for us.